Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Externally generated energy can be better stored

25.01.2008

An increasing number of private individuals supply their excess energy, from external energy sources (windmills and solar cells), to the electricity grid and only take energy from the grid when necessary. Dutch-sponsored researcher Haimin Tao examined how this externally generated energy can be better stored and transferred.

In a project funded by Technology Foundation STW, Haimin Tao examined the conditions a good regulation system for energy transfer must meet.

As the sources and storage elements vary considerably in terms of aspects such as voltage level, the conventional conversion technique needed to be improved.

The search for improvements focused on soft switching, reduction of current amplitudes and a greater efficiency.

To safeguard the quality of the power flows, the researcher sought the appropriate regulators and storage systems so that the energy generated by external sources could be (temporarily) stored in suitable components, such as batteries and supercapacitors.

Eventually he arrived at a triple port system that rendered energy transfer between different sources possible. As the new triple port converter transforms the energy in a single step, it could be more cost effective, flexible and efficient than the conventional approach.

Tiny pores at a cell's entryway act as miniature bouncers, letting in some electrically charged atoms--ions--but blocking others. Operating as exquisitely sensitive filters, these "ion channels" play a critical role in biological functions such as muscle contraction and the firing of brain cells.

To rapidly transport the right ions through the cell membrane, the tiny channels rely on a complex interplay between the ions and surrounding molecules,...

The miniaturization of the current technology of storage media is hindered by fundamental limits of quantum mechanics. A new approach consists in using so-called spin-crossover molecules as the smallest possible storage unit. Similar to normal hard drives, these special molecules can save information via their magnetic state. A research team from Kiel University has now managed to successfully place a new class of spin-crossover molecules onto a surface and to improve the molecule’s storage capacity. The storage density of conventional hard drives could therefore theoretically be increased by more than one hundred fold. The study has been published in the scientific journal Nano Letters.

Over the past few years, the building blocks of storage media have gotten ever smaller. But further miniaturization of the current technology is hindered by...